Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First, I wish to correct the Minister who stated that the cost of what is proposed would be €55 million. However, it is designed to bring about a saving of €55 million. She also referred to the previous amnesties. Everyone knows why those amnesties did not work. People who were in receipt of social welfare payments of £70 or £80 per week at that time and ran up arrears of between £4,000 to £6,000 either as a result of fraud or on foot of an error on the part of the Department. The key point is that if the fraud or error is brought to a halt at that point, then the €55 million saving to which I refer will begin to accrue. We want to save money for taxpayers and we want social welfare payments to go to those who need them most. We are all on the same page in this regard. The Minister either misunderstands what we are suggesting or she is deliberately misrepresenting it. Let us deal with the facts. The previous amnesties did not work because there were no incentives and because people on social welfare payments were placed in a completely impossible situation. What we are trying to do is to stop money being wasted, to save money, to put a stop to fraud and to ensure that errors on the part of the Department will be corrected. We want Fine Gael and Labour to take that on board.

This Bill is not about taking a shot at the Government, it is about putting forward a constructive suggestion. I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for introducing the Bill, which is a real and serious attempt to try to deal with the matter in question. The Bill is imaginative, progressive, fair and just. Most importantly, what it suggests is achievable.

We are acutely aware that social welfare payment rates are completely inadequate and that they result in many households being below the poverty line and struggling to pay bills or put food on the table. While driving to Leinster House from Offaly this morning, I heard a radio interview with one of my constituents who is in receipt of the back to enterprise allowance and who is trying to make a go of it. The man in question is in his 50s and after he pays his rent - he is not in receipt of rent subsidy - he has only €3.40 per day left to live on. He uses this money to pay for food and he cannot afford heating. He outlined what he is able to afford to buy from the point of view of food out of €3.40 and I can inform the Minister that his is a fairly rough life.

In the run-up to the introduction of the budget each year, there is not a week that goes by without the appearance of headlines which scream about the activities of dole scroungers, dole cheats and fraudsters. One could easily be fooled into believing that everyone in receipt of social welfare is somehow defrauding the system and that if we could only put a stop to the activities of these individuals, all our woes would be over and there would be no need for the troika, property taxes or cuts to child benefit. Many newspaper headlines are devoted to fraud but the reality is that the majority of overpayments arise as a result of genuine errors. In fact the level of fraud and error in the social welfare system is estimated to account for an average of 3.4% of total expenditure. That is a damn sight less than what Government spokespersons would have us believe is the figure and it is broadly in line with international comparisons. Of the 3.4% to which I refer, fraud accounts for a shrinking minority of less than one third or a grand total of less than 1%. We agree with those who state that the latter figure should be cut out completely. The remaining two thirds of the 3.4% relates to genuine customer or departmental error.

A significant number of people have become aware that they are being overpaid. These individuals are afraid to alert the Department because they simply could not afford to repay the money they have received. This is the difference between what is proposed in the Bill and what happened in the two previous social welfare amnesties. We all agree that those amnesties failed. The fact that they cannot afford to make repayments causes major anguish for the individuals concerned. If they put their hands up in respect of what has happened, it would lead to the Department avoiding excess expenditure. Let us save money for taxpayers.

Ireland is facing into a deep economic crisis. In that context, we are all trying to identify ways in which money might be saved. The economic crisis to which I refer is rooted in the free market, deregulation, the greed of bankers and the failure of the previous Government to regulate the activities of banks and developers. The latter were assisted and encouraged in those activities by their cheerleaders in government and in the media.

The crisis threatens our sovereignty and the viability of our communities. It has affected the reputation of the country. It is a banking, fiscal, economic and social crisis. Sitting on the Opposition benches it would be easy to oppose everything and propose nothing, but that is not the politics of Sinn Féin. We do our best to bring forward serious alternative policies. To date, in this Dáil, Sinn Féin has introduced 14 Bills and 22 Private Members' motions and produced two substantive alternative budgets. Sinn Féin's politics and policies are solution-based and this Bill is such an attempt.

Each year in our alternative budget which Members on the other side of the House shout down before they even read it, Sinn Féin makes social protection spending proposals and identifies sources of revenue to cover the cost. For example, in our most recent alternative budget entitled, Making the Right Choices, Sinn Féin proposed an increase and extension of the fuel allowance scheme in order to restore the six winter weeks taken away, the restoration of the energy component of the household benefits package, and a capital programme to reduce spending on rent supplement. In addition, we have made detailed proposals to reform the rules of various schemes, including domiciliary care allowance, JobBridge and working age payments. The Bill presents a practical way of making a saving of €55 million in the Department of Social Protection which would allow the Minister for Social Protection to redeploy staff to front-line services and have a little more money for those who are in dire straits.

Maeve Sheehan, writing in the Sunday Independenton 24 June 2012, stated:

Joan Burton's "welfare police" are planning high-profile investigations into hairdressers, scrap dealers, couriers, clothes recyclers, taxi drivers, market stall holders, haulage firms and nursing homes in the crackdown on welfare fraud. According to a briefing document released to the Sunday Independent, the Special Investigations Unit will unleash inspectors trained by the garda fraud squad on the sectors in the coming months, after they were identified as high-risk areas for welfare abuse.

The Bill would ensure money was both repaid and also saved. The so-called welfare police could be redeployed back into social welfare offices to process claims. Then the public might have a decent service and not forced to wait weeks and sometimes months for their claims to be processed. In particular, disability allowance applicants are being forced to wait for 12 months or more to have their applications processed. I dealt with a case recently of a constituent who was dying of cancer. Her claim was refused and referred to the appeals office. We rang the appeals office in D'Olier Street about her claim and succeeded in having it processed months before she died. However, this is shocking and I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Joe Costello, who may not be familiar with the position, to bring the matter to the attention of the Minister.

The social welfare amnesty is just one proposal in Sinn Féin's reform agenda. The bulk of our agenda is based on the knowledge that social welfare spending is vital for local economies, families and job retention in the retail and services sectors, in particular. Our amnesty proposal targets this group. It would provide them with a one-off opportunity to come clean without fear of punitive measures being taken or being crippled by debt. It would allow the Department to draw a line under these cases and also to save money. Identity fraud has been deliberately excluded from the amnesty proposal. For example, the amnesty would not cover anyone who was making multiple claims in multiple names and locations, nor would it cover someone who was collecting the pension of a deceased person. We estimate that it would give rise to a once-off spike in controlled savings of approximately €55 million. It would be followed by a intensification of the Department's standard anti-fraud and control measures for two months. Public awareness of the Department's intentions in this regard would help to enhance the take-up rate of the amnesty. It would provide the incentive for people to come clean.

The amnesty would involve the Department forgoing the repayment of overpayments. However, this would be significantly outweighed by the size of the controlled savings. In reality, the Department only ever recoups a tiny fraction of the overspend. In some cases this is because the person no longer receives a social welfare payment. In others the recoupment of anything more than a negligible sum would cause the whole family to become destitute. In the majority of cases there is simply no way to establish when the overpayment commenced.

The Bill puts it up to the Government by providing a solution. If, like Sinn Féin, the Government wants to find a solution, it should support and vote for the Bill.

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